Traditionally users access their personal files mainly by using folder navigation. We evaluate whether recent improvements in desktop search have changed this fundamental aspect of Personal Information Management (PIM). We tested this in two studies using the same questionnaire: (a) The Windows Study-a longitudinal comparison of Google Desktop and Windows XP Search Companion, and (b) The Mac Study-a large scale comparison of Mac Spotlight and Sherlock.There were few effects for improved search. First, regardless of search engine, there was a strong navigation preference: on average, users estimated that they used navigation for 56-68% of file retrieval events but searched for only 4-15% of events. Second, the effect of improving the quality of the search engine on search usage was limited and inconsistent. Third, search was used mainly as a last resort when users could not remember file location. Finally, there was no evidence that using improved desktop search engines leads people to change their filing habits to become less reliant on hierarchical file organization. We conclude by offering theoretical explanations for navigation preference, relating to differences between PIM and Internet retrieval, and suggest alternative design directions for PIM systems.

We examine the effects of new technologies for digital photography on people's longer term storage and access to collections of personal photos. We report an empirical study of parents' ability to retrieve photos related to salient family events from more than a year ago. Performance was relatively poor with people failing to find almost 40% of pictures. We analyze participants' organizational and access strategies to identify reasons for this poor performance. Possible reasons for retrieval failure include: storing too many pictures, rudimentary organization, use of multiple storage systems, failure to maintain collections and participants' false beliefs about their ability to access photos. We conclude by exploring the technical and theoretical implications of these findings.

Folder navigation is the main way that personal computer users retrieve their own files. People dedicate considerable time to creating systematic structures to facilitate such retrieval. Despite the prevalence of both manual organization and navigation, there is very little systematic data about how people actually carry out navigation, or about the relation between organization structure and retrieval parameters.The aims of our research were therefore to study users' folder structure, personal file navigation, and the relations between them. We asked 296 participants to retrieve 1,131 of their active files and analyzed each of the 5,035 navigation steps in these retrievals. Folder structures were found to be shallow (files were retrieved from mean depth of 2.86 folders), with small folders (a mean of 11.82 files per folder) containing many subfolders (M = 10.64). Navigation was largely successful and efficient with participants successfully accessing 94% of their files and taking 14.76 seconds to do this on average. Retrieval time and success depended on folder size and depth. We therefore found the users' decision to avoid both deep structure and large folders to be adaptive. Finally, we used a predictive model to

In this article we suggest a user-subjective approach to Personal Information Management (PIM) system design. This approach advocates that PIM systems relate to the subjective value-added attributes that the user gives to the data stored in the PIM system. These attributes should facilitate system use: help the user find the information item again, recall it when needed, and use it effectively in the next interaction with the item. Driven from the user-subjective approach are three generic principles which are described and discussed: (a) The subjective classification principle, stating that all information items related to the same subjective topic should be classified together regardless of their technological format; (b) The subjective importance principle, proposing that the subjective importance of information should determine its degree of visual salience and accessibility; and (c) The subjective context principle, suggesting that information should be retrieved and viewed by the user in the same context in which it was previously used. We claim that these principles are only sporadically implemented in operating systems currently available on personal computers, and demonstrate alternatives for interface design.

Each of us has an ever-growing collection of personal digital data: documents, emails, Web pages we visited, tasks, contacts, appointments and pictures we took. To use any of this, we have to find it. The ease of finding something depends on how we organize our digital stuff. In this book, personal information management (PIM) experts Ofer Bergman and Steve Whittaker explain why we organize our personal digital data the way we do and how better design can help us manage our collections more efficiently. Bergman and Whittaker report that many of us use hierarchical folders for our personal digital organizing. Critics of this method point out that information is hidden from sight in folders that are often within other folders; so that we have to remember the exact location of information to access it. They therefore suggest other methods: search, more flexible than navigating folders; tags, which allow multiple categorizations; and group information management. Yet Bergman and Whittaker have found that these other methods that work best for public information management don’t work as well for personal information management.  Bergman and Whittaker describe personal information collection as curation: we preserve and organize this data to ensure our future access to it. Unlike other kinds of information management fields, in PIM the same user organizes and retrieves the information. After explaining the cognitive and psychological reasons that so many prefer folders, Bergman and Whittaker propose the user-subjective approach, which does not replace folder hierarchies but exploits the unique characteristics of PIM.